My bride banned me from uttering that word in her presence. Although a minor infringement on my First Amendment rights, I do honor it. The emailer was almost certainly male..very few women use that word.

On the left and on the right and in the middle, some people just gotta hate. It's a pity they can't be bothered to discuss, but I suppose that's less satisfying to our primal desires to hurt, assert dominance, and define ourselves in relation to the "other."

I was recently "unfriended" by a liberal on facebook. After she posted an article on the Minnesota shutdown I commented that Republicans had no reason to cave. She said I was a knee Jerk tea-bagger and unfriended me.

IF, they could, I mean of what value would men, BE? Isn’t this one of the reasons Meade moved in with Althouse?

I mean it’s good to see that we can all just get along…..

My sympathies to you and yes, I’m betting this was a guy, I’m sure he’s a caring, emasculated Liberal dating a Hippie Chic, so he can release his pent up misogyny on YOU, because you are a acceptable target for the Two Minute Hate.

Moose, that's what I was thinking. Except I figure that this is the guy that was yelling at the 14-year old girl speaking in Madison. Guy like that looks like he would just be about now learning how to do an email and send it. Give him another year, maybe he will know how to forward inane crap to everyone in his address book. When will he learn how to log into a blog and make comments? - never!

Mayhap, though not in my circle…where I come from this is a BIG “No-No” Word and Yhwh Protect anyone, male or female who should use it….

And Womyn may use the “C” word, and African-Americans may call each other “N!gger”, and Poles call each other “Pollock” and Infantrymen or Marine Riflemen may call each other “Grunts” but it’s not a word that someone from the OUTSIDE may use to describe a member of that group…

I'm not sure why you would lend the author of that particular missive anonymity. I'd publish with the name and email address, including employer (although I concede there is little chance that this person has meaningful employment).

Look on the bright side Althouse, at least your Madison Privileges are still intact….Sure, you may be a C^nt, but at least they’ll still serve you pizza. I pray this was a 1L that has to take a class from you, BTW.

The offensive word has a long and illustrious etymology. Shakespeare was among its greatest practitioners. During the play within the play, Hamlet asks Ophelia if he might lie between her legs so as to more "comfortably" view the performance. Ophelia blushes and demurs. Hamlet teasingly responds "Do you think I meant country matters?"

Externalized self-hate; this misfit defenses strong internal currents of self-hate and self-contempt by completely repressing them. He (she?) has to hate others to avoid experiencing his own self-loathing. Would have made a good Nazi.

We're in the middle of a cold war and nobody wants to say it out loud. You have a sitting member of congress calling her opponents racists every damn day of the week. Today it was Shirley Jackson Lee. That's just reprehensible.

People are that emotionally charged up because Obama gets criticized? Well, I get emotional too.

Let's settle with our emotions - It's simple. I challenge any liberal so full of self-righteousness and hatred (are you listening Wisconsin Public Employees union members?)Obama supporters:

Meet me in a dark alley after midnight. I will bring United States Marines that love their country and will definitely not be voting for Obama or your anti-American ways conservative. I have multiple Marine family and friends. You bring your Marines.

What's that? You can't find any US Marines that support your point of view.? Marines that commit to giving their lives to protect your right to hate and curse Obama's critics? That protect your full right to be foolish and shit-headed in your political thinking, you lemmings? You can't round up enough US Marines that would buy your garbage?

Too bad. Cause I would love to shut your fucking anti-American mouths for a awhile. A swollen couple of lips and eyelids would do on such ungrateful liberal motherfuckers.

I truly would not do violence. Every human life is precious, no matter haw stupid and destructive to this country.

In arbitration, some say a decision angering both sides is probably an appropriate one. Ann, maybe you have found your cruel neutrality middle ground: those who rudely wonder about your wisdom in voting for Obama on one side and now the rude name-callers from the other. I am in the wondering category but try to stay short of rudeness.

And Womyn may use the “C” word, and African-Americans may call each other “N!gger”, and Poles call each other “Pollock” and Infantrymen or Marine Riflemen may call each other “Grunts” but it’s not a word that someone from the OUTSIDE may use to describe a member of that group…

I am missing something here.Who set up those "rules" that all the rest of us have to follow?The Progressive Jewish media?

Why should we listen to them? Or rappers? Or feminists who "love their cunts!" a la Ensler (who the progressive media loves as one of the Tribe) but insist the rest of us should be fired or arrested if we say it?

====================Anyways, in context of Althouse's email....so much for the Left's 'post-Tuscon call for the New Civility".

It didn't last long with all those budget cut protests, did it?

It appears to me that the Left, activists have escalated the organized shock, outrage, confrontational behavior right to the edge of public violence. And if history is a guide - that eventually leads to the other side escalating.

Scott M said"Ah. You've never worked with truckers, most of which are proudly non-union. A bunch of fucking potty-mouths, those guys.--------------

I'm a former OTR driver, and 90% of the drivers (union or non-union) are decent, courteous, respectful human beings who absolutely do not use that language.

But, the 10% who do are nothing but road trash. There were a number of times I was goin' down the road, only to have some jackass start on me with that kind of language. If it was a high traffic area a lot of other drivers would get all over the ass. If it was a more remote area and I was by myself, I'd use the off button on the CB. Some people are just psycho....

My brother used that language on me, the day our mom died....I was hoping he'd hit me so I could call the cops.... good thing he's a Christian, he'll answer to God for that....

I use the word in public on rare occasion - but almost exclusively direct it toward men.

Men tend to overuse it - especially UK guys. It loses its power and is easily ignored.

It really only has any charge when you can tell the guy using it has *real issues* with women and is trying to leverage the word to attack on that level. And then what can you say? He's an ass. You have to take into account the emotions behind it.

In this case, your emailer is, appropriately enough, merely being a petty cunt with his usage. Hah.

And it seems to me "cunt" is a particularly nasty word--I say that as old cavalryman who has a wonderful command of four letter ango-saxon swear words. My old platoon sergeant in basic training, MSG Ronald Marcum (RIP) taught me well

Cunt and cocksucker are the last of the legit curses. They still have power. Nothing gets a woman's attention like calling her a cunt. It's a pretty good substitute for a left hook. For guys it's cocksucker, unless of course you are one.

I was recently "unfriended" by a liberal on facebook. After she posted an article on the Minnesota shutdown I commented that Republicans had no reason to cave. She said I was a knee Jerk tea-bagger and unfriended me.

I got unfriended during the early weeks of the Madison lunacy by a friend who regularly posted all the leftist, pro-union crap to his Facebook wall and did not appreciate when I gently attempted to correct the fabrications.

"My bride banned me from uttering that word in her presence. Although a minor infringement on my First Amendment rights, I do honor it. The emailer was almost certainly male..very few women use that word."

You have not lived until you hear a woman use it. I worked with a woman how used it all the time professionally (make up woman) and it was a wonderful experience witnessing this.

Anatomy - Currently, all male and female "naughty bits" are covered with slang terms that range from acceptable to vulgar, but common, not shocking.

Save the vaginal barrel proper. That term supposedly must be used, or these words only feminists can use amongst themselves, feminists claim.

The term pussy is more about the furry mons..old black (nigger) slang...and even that is getting outmoded for the Brazilianized mons area of recent generations of us post-baby boomers.

If cunt and quim aren't acceptable slang for the vaginal barrel/tunnel, a new slang word should apply. Feminists and the perpetually outraged should be consulted!Preferable one, at most two syllables.We could borrow foreign words for cunts on asumption that feminists can only spread their outrage just so thin.German for cunt is "Fotze".Arabic for cunt is "Koos"Persian for cunt is "Kos". Chinese for cunt is "Bye"Finnish for cunt is "Toosa"

All are not considered strong swear words, or even swear words at all. It is common in the UK and Australia as saying "dick" is here.

BTW - Arabic for shit is "Aha" - no doubt named when some inquisitive Arab wiping his ass with his left hand felt something interesting in his excrement smear or dingleberries. Pulling his fingers back to look and sniff, and saying "A-ha!"

Actually I disagree. That word is actually used pretty often by LEFTIST females to demean women with whom they disagree. Just go look at how many times Lefty feminists used exactly that epithet against Sarah Palin.

If I was going to lean one direction or another, I'd actually lean towards it being a "feminist" since the emailer ALSO called Ann "petty." How many men who have worked themselves into a "righteous rage" so that they can justify calling a woman a c*nt, will then use the relatively dainty term, "petty."

Nope. For my money, it was one of those self-avowed guardians of all things Feminist: a woman who feels "entitled" to use the word, and so it more freely fits at home with "petty" in her own lexicon.

While we're on the subject and freely discussing it, is there an explanation for the asymmetry in the effects of the various terms that all refer to the vagina? Call a woman a "pussy" and she doesn't seem to care. Call a woman a "cunt" and you might as well have blockaded her ports. But call her a "twat" and it seems to be in a hazy area in between the two. Not generally acceptable, but not nearly as radioactive as "cunt."

Jack Cashill in Deconstructing Obama argues that BO never wrote his own books and provides hundreds of proofs that Ayers wrote Dreams. I know, petty.

It's a fun book which makes the claim that Obama is to literature what Milli Vanilli was to music.

Sure, petty.

In fact, with Obama's approval rating down in the low 30s, the whole country is petty, and only the hardcore faithful with the big souls aren't worried about the 14 trillion dollar deficit, the attempt to raise the debt ceiling for yet more, and selling everything we have to the last great communist nation.

Cashill's book is so good.

But it's so petty. He points out that in Obama's own articles tenses sometimes agree, but logic is bad, and cliches abound.

So, who wrote Dreams?

The same guy who wrote Terrorist Daze?

Isn't it petty and mean to point these things out?

Isn't it petty to even read any critique of the Great Leader?

The whole country is a bunch of "cunts" now. (Are leftists allowed to use this word? I didn't understand! I thought this was supposed to be a positive term for a spunky woman in the new jargon.)

Sitting at a coffee shop in Madison this morning, as a small family parked in the table next to me. They could see a TV screen out of my sight line, and the mother looked up to see what was on. Evidently Dear Leader was on. She told her little girls that she loved everything about this man; his great intellect and his wonderful understanding of how the country should work, as well as his Presidential air, and the fresh new tone he brought to Washington. One of the girls commented that he has a most beautiful smile.

and, how do you know it was a leftie? Could be a rightie in leftie clothing...

And this is what passes for reason in the Community-Based Reality. The enlightened "Progressive" who sent Althouse that clever missive wouldn't have known that she would publish it here for our entertainment. But Vicky knows that her people are on the side of Good and Truth and Social Justice, so it couldn't have been a Leftie -- musta been one of them Reich-wing RethugliKKKan scrotum-suckers.

After almost half a century, many "Progressives" still don't believe it was a loser Communist dipshit who murdered John F. Kennedy ... because they're the good guys, they don't do that shit. Musta been some kind of shdowy conspiracy -- Halliburton and Nixon and Blackwater and the Republicans ... Yeah, that's the ticket!

I find it interesting, when AA advances the notion Rush wondered aloud (duh) about, that Obama would hasten the problems of America which would then hasten the cure(s) for our country, she doesn't get credit for that point.

It's how I felt, for a short period, before the election.

And, of course, it's rational to vote for an historic candidate who lies enough to sound credibly decent enough to those of us who aren't psephologists.

I've always found "rational" a low bar when wonders to relate abound. Obama was that wonder, and to many millions still is.

Years ago,in the days of barbershops and movie palaces, Robert Kuntz, in a good mood arrived home after work and offered to take his wife to a show.

Happily,she kissed him and proceeded to get ready. Being a hot night, he told her he would wait for her in front of the building.

After 15 minutes waiting and pacing,he looked at the barbershop next door and decided to get a quick trim. 15 minutes later, still no wife ,peeved he asks the barber to give him a shave.In the meantime the Mrs finally comes down and is slightly distressed that her husband is not to be seen.She paces up and down the street and finally notices a man in the barbershop chair,his face obscured by a hot towel.She pops her head in the door, and asks,"Bob Kuntz here?",and the barber responds "NO MA'AM, just shaves and haircuts".

Chaucer made great use of the word. See, e.g., the Wife of Bath's Prologue in his Canterbury Tales, where she berates her late husband:

Since you've enough, why do you reck or careHow merrily all other folks may fare?For certainly, old dotard, by your leave,You shall have cunt all right enough at eve.He is too much a niggard who's so tightThat from his lantern he'll give none a light.For he'll have never the less light, by gad;Since you've enough, you need not be so sad.

(It's interesting that Chaucer uses the variant “Quaint” that Craig refers to above — spelled “queynte” in his Middle English.)

In the 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, they can't even bring themselves to say/write it. Words like "quim" are simply defined as "the monosyllable" (which in turn is defined as "a woman's commodity").

When you look under "C," you find "C**t: The χοννος of the Greek, and the cunnus of the Latin dictionaries; a nasty name for a nasty thing."

Of course, D.H. Lawrence did yeoman's work in trying to rehabilitate the word in "Lady Chatterley's Lover," but he obviously wasn't completely successful.